Thane Property News

MUMBAI: The national Ease of Living exercise by the Union home and urban affairs ministry is aimed at helping cities assess their liveability vis-à-vis global and national benchmarks and encourage cities to move towards an outcome-based approach to urban planning and management.

Mumbai scored well on identity and culture (rank 2), public open spaces and mixed land use (1), assured water supply (3) and transportation and mobility (8). Surprisingly, the financial capital ranked 63 in economy and employment, 54 in reduced pollution, 23 in governance and 36 in education.

The rankings are based on the overall scores each city got on a 100-point scale across 15 categories and 78 indicators (see box). The data was made up of what the cities furnished, a third-party survey and feedback from around 60,000 citizens “While we are glad Mumbai has ranked third, we will look at areas where the city requires improvement as well. Once we have evaluated it, we will start filling in the gaps to improve our ranking the next time,” said additional municipal commissioner Vijay Singhal.

A BMC official privy to the whole process said they collated the data sought by the state government for the report in April. “There was a live questionnaire. While around 80% of the information sought on open spaces, water supply, road network, transportation facilities like bus stations, security cameras was available with the BMC, for additional details we had to approach authorities like the MMRDA, police or Mhada,” he said.

In May, an independent team arrived and audited facilities across random locations. The BMC also had to provide water and noise samples from random locations.

In safety, Pune and Greater Mumbai were ranked at 25 and 35 among all the cities.

What worked in favour of Navi Mumbai was governance (rank 1), education (2), health (3), transportation and mobility (4) and assured water supply (7). It was let down by power supply (74), reduced pollution (48), housing and inclusiveness (35). Municipal commissioner Ramaswami N said he is happy Navi Mumbai is marginally behind Pune. “We are just 0.09 overall points behind... Navi Mumbai has also been judged best for governance,” said Ramaswami.

Thane scored on power supply, transportation and mobility, ranking first, assured water supply (4) and employment (9). It came up short in safety and security (82), public open spaces (40), reduced pollution (53).

“We have managed to bring Thane a long way from its identity of being a dormitory city or playing younger brother to Mumbai. It is a matter of immense pride for me that I could contribute to help the city secure an admirable place on the national map,” said municipal commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal